There was a boy whose
parents promised to buy him a watch if he would be on time for school and
church for a given length of time. The boy did his duty and met the
requirement, so he asked his parents to get him the watch they had promised.
Money in the family was tight at the time so his parents said it might take a
while before they could make the purchase. Each day, the boy asked about his
reward, until finally, the father told his son that if he mentioned “watch” one
more time, he wouldn’t get one.
Each night before dinner,
this family read a Bible verse together and they each took turns choosing a
verse to read. When it came time for the boy to choose a verse he selected Mark
13:37 which reads: “And what I say unto you, I say unto all—Watch!”
We are all fascinated
with time from an early age, aren’t we? As we begin this month-long series on Giving is Living, I want to talk with
you about time, and giving God our time. As I have looked over the Bible in
preparation for this message, I see at least five lessons on time from the
Scriptures.
The first lesson is that our time is in God’s
hands. David wrote in Psalm
31:15, “My times are in your hands.” St. Augustine had this verse pinned by his
bedside when he died. I think what David was recognizing in his prayer was that
all his life’s circumstances are under God’s control. I believe that is true
for us as well. All the events and circumstances of our lives are sifted
through God’s fingers. The time of our lives is in God’s hands.
This is true for at least
one important reason: God created time. God does not live in time. Rather, time
is part of the created universe.
In the town hall in
Copenhagen stands the world’s most complicated clock (pictured above). It took forty years to
build at a cost of more than a million dollars. The clock has ten faces,
fifteen thousand parts, and is accurate to two-fifths of a second every three
hundred years. The clock can compute the time of day, the days of the week, the
months and years, and the movements of the planets for twenty-five hundred
years. Some parts of that clock will not move until twenty-five centuries have
passed.
Now what is most
intriguing to me about this clock is that it is not accurate. It loses
two-fifths of a second every three hundred years. Like all clocks, this timepiece
in Copenhagen must be regulated by a more precise clock, the universe itself.
The mighty astronomical clock of the universe, with its billions of moving
parts, from atoms to stars, rolls on century after century with movements so
reliable that all time on earth can be measure by it.
Time itself is part of
God’s creation and God’s timing is perfect even though our human measurement of
it is not.
Now, time is not only
something created by God, but it is also governed by God. That’s part of what
David means when he says, “My times are in your hands.” Our time is governed by
God. All our time belongs to him since we are God’s creatures.
William Law once wrote,
Where
did we come up with this concept of “spare time,” anyway? Is there any time for
which we aren’t accountable to God? Is there any time during which God doesn’t
care what you are doing? No Christian has ever had spare time. You may have
spare time from labor or necessity, you may stop working and refresh yourself,
but no Christian ever had time off from living like a Christian.
Our time is in God’s
hands; it belongs to God. Therefore, when we give God our time, we are merely
giving back to God something that is already his. God has entrusted us with
time as his stewards.
The second lesson I see in Scripture is that there
is a time for everything. Solomon
writes in Ecclesiastes 3:1, “There is a time for everything, and a season for
every activity under heaven.”
Solomon is making a
similar point to David. There is a divinely appointed time for everything. The
cycles of life itself, birth and death and everything in between are appointed
by God. Solomon concludes by saying, in effect, that there is nothing better
for us as human beings than to accept what God has sovereignly appointed.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
wrote, “Everything has its time, and the main thing is that we keep step with
God, and do not keep pressing on a few steps ahead—nor keep dawdling a step
behind. It’s presumptuous to want to have everything at once… Everything has
its time.”
Personally, I believe God
gives each one of us exactly enough tie to accomplish what he wants.
Imagine what you would do
if your bank phoned you every morning and told you that your account had been
credited with 86,400 pennies ($864). Furthermore, imagine what you would do if
your bank gave you this one stipulation: that you must spend all that money
every day. There is no carryover to the next day. Whatever you do not spend is
lost. What would you do with such a gift?
We do have such a bank.
It is called God’s 1st World Bank of Time. Every morning this bank
credits your account with 86,400 seconds—but no balances are carried into the
next day. Every night erases what you fail to use. (Tim Hansel)
God gives each of us the
same amount of time every day, and I believe God gives each of us enough time
in our lives to accomplish his purposes.
The third lesson on time
that I see in Scripture may seem like it is in direct conflict with the second,
but it isn’t really. That lesson is that
time is fleeting. David writes in Psalm 39:4-5,
Show me, O Lord, my
life’s end
And the number of my
days;
Let me know how fleeting
is my life.
You have made my days a
mere handbreadth;
The span of my years is
as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a
breath.
God gives us just enough
time on earth to accomplish his purposes for us, but we do not have forever.
That is how I see lesson 2 and lesson 3 fitting together.
Often, we wish we had
more time, but we don’t. It’s like the television commercial years ago for a
telephone company that shows a drive-thru window like you’d see at a fast food
restaurant. Over the window are the words: TIME “R” US. One customer drives up
and says, “Give me a couple of seconds.” Another drives up and with great
weariness says, “Can I have another day?” (Donald W. McCullough)
We can all identify with
those customers. There are times when we all wish we had more time. Therefore,
we must be disciplined about the way we use the time God gives us.
My friend Douglas Gresham
says, “There is only one thing that you can steal from a man that he can never
replace…. and that is his time.”
Now, I realize that for
some of us it is very difficult to be on time. Certain circumstances of life
make being on time more difficult for some than for others.
Mary Jane Kurtz has
written,
When
I was a young, single mom with four children, it was difficult to get them all
ready for church on Sunday. One particular Sunday morning as the children
started to complain and squabble, I stomped from one room to the other, saying
out loud why it was important to have a good attitude. Suddenly, I noticed all
four children huddled together and laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Mom,”
they said, “every time you slammed down your foot, smoke would come up around
your feet. It seemed like the wrath of God!” In reality, it was the powder I
had sprinkled in my shoes.
But
it worked. We made it to church that morning and practically every Sunday
thereafter.
A fourth lesson I see in
Scripture is that we need to make the
most of the time we do have. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:15-17, “Be very
careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every
opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but
understand what the Lord’s will is.”
Paul is saying that
because time is fleeting, and we live in evil times, we need to be very careful
and purposeful in how we live. We need to understand God’s purposes and
priorities for us and we need to put them into action.
Allow me to lay out for
you five priorities regarding the use of our time that I see in Scripture. First,
we need to spend time with God.
I love Stephen Covey’s
illustration of how we need to prioritize our time. Covey says, “Big rocks go
in first.” In other words, if you have a container and you have a bunch of
rocks, the best way to put the rocks in the container if you want to be sure as
many rocks as possible will fit, is to put the big rocks in first. Then find
space for the medium rocks, and finally the little pebbles can just scoot in
around the bigger rocks.
When we are talking about
prioritizing our time, what bigger rock is there than God? Does it not make
sense to give God priority in terms of our time?
Psalm 1:1-2 says,
“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in
the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law
he meditates day and night.” Scripture promises a blessing to those who spend
time alone with God.
At the beginning of our
journey through Mark’s Gospel we read about a very busy day in the life of Jesus.
Yet, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left
the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” If Jesus, the Son
of God, needed to make time alone with his heavenly Father a priority, how much
more do we?
Two sisters, daughters of
a former slave, rocketed to fame when a memoir chronicling their lives became a
bestseller in 1993. Their book, Having
Our Say: The Delaney Sisters’ First 100 Years, was adapted into a Broadway
play. A second book followed. One of the sisters lived to be 109. One of the
sisters’ wise sayings was: “No one should ever be too busy or pressured or
tired to make a time and place for God in their lives. After all, he has to
manage the whole world, and he’s never too busy for us.”
A second time-priority I see in
Scripture is time with our families. 1 Chronicles 16:43 tells us about a time after the Ark of the
Covenant was brought into the tabernacle in Jerusalem. David and many of the
Israelites had been worshipping God. Then we read, “Then all the people left,
each for his own home, and David returned home to bless his family.”
I think this one brief
verse contains a massive truth that we dare not forget or neglect. That is that
when all is said and done, we need to make it a priority to return home and
bless our families. We need to be careful that we not get so caught up in our
work that we neglect our families, however important our work may be.
Author Max Gunther tells
this story in his book, The Weekenders:
One
blustery weekend I was strolling with my little boy on an Atlantic beach. We
were scaling clamshells into the onshore wind and watching them curve back to
us. I don’t know why this was fun. But on that morning scaling clamshells
seemed like the best of all possible things to do. After awhile I looked at my
watch. It was lunchtime. We left the beach reluctantly. Only after we sat down
to eat did I wonder why I had stopped the game. What is so important about noon?
Why must we be hypnotized by the clock? My boy and I went back to the beach
after lunch, but the mood was gone. The clamshells and the wind did nothing for
us now but blow sand in our eyes.
There are two different
words for time in Greek. One is chronos, that is time measured by the
clock. Then there is kairos, the time
of special moments and events, like the moments Max Gunther spent on the beach
with his son. Sometimes we need to take off our watches and just spend kairos time with our families.
A third time-priority that Scripture
recommends, which most of us don’t have to be told, is that we need to spend
time working. God wants us to
spend time working, whether it is a job inside or outside the home, working as
a student, or working at any one of the myriad of jobs people do who say they
are “retired”. Listen to what Paul says about work in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12,
“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to
work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the
respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” In
other words—don’t be lazy! God wants us to work to support ourselves
financially so that we won’t be dependent on others. When we do this as
Christians we win the respect of those outside the church.
Furthermore, Paul says in
1 Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially
for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever.” Enough said.
A fourth time-priority mentioned in
Scripture is that of spending time with the Body of Christ, the Church. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not give up meeting
together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one
another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
How much of a priority is
church for you? Does church easily take second place when “better offers” come
along? Is time spent in worship and fellowship one of the first things to slip
from your life when the going gets tough? I don’t think God wants it to be that
way. One of the ways God wants to bless our lives is through worship and
fellowship with other believers. But he can’t bless us in this way when we
don’t show up for church.
Finally, Scripture talks about the
time-priority of serving others.
In Galatians 6:9-10 Paul says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at
the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we
have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong
to the family of believers.”
I know it is a temptation
for many of us who have served long and hard and well in the church to want to
give up. It is tempting to step aside and let others do the work for a while.
But the Lord says to us, “Don’t become weary in well doing.” God is doing great
things in this church. And I believe we will see God do even greater things if
we do not give up.
At the same time, I want
to challenge those of you who are new to the church to step up. Step up to
membership. Step up to getting involved. Step up to serving. I believe you will
be blessed as you do.
Speaking of time, I’m
running out of it! Allow me to close with one final lesson from Scripture about
time. We were made to live in eternity,
not in time. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has made everything beautiful in
its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom
what God has done from beginning to end.”
The NIV Study Bible says
about this verse: “God’s beautiful but tantalizing world is too big for us, yet
its satisfactions are too small. Since we were made for eternity, the things of
time cannot fully and permanently satisfy.”
C. S. Lewis once wrote,
For
we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How
he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our
experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were
repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed;
unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.
I think the fact that we
are so often astonished at the passing of time suggests that we were made to
live outside of time. We long to be free of the constraints of time. The good
news of the Gospel is that one day, we will be free.
Porris Wittel, a dock
worker in Gillingham, England, hated his alarm clock for 47 years. For 47
years, early, in the dark, every morning, that alarm clock shocked Porris
awake. For 47 years Porris longed to ignore the clock, to shut it off. But for
47 years Porris submitted to the pressure of that clock. On the day of his
retirement, Porris got his revenge. He took his alarm clock to work and he
flattened it in an 80-ton hydraulic press. Porris said, “It was a lovely
feeling.”
I believe we shall all
enjoy that lovely feeling one day, if we have put our faith in Jesus Christ. I
don’t refer to the day of our retirement. Rather, I refer to the day when
Christ shall return and time will be no more. One day we will enjoy forever,
timeless eternity, the eternal NOW which God created us and redeemed us to
enjoy.
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